Errors-To: ecto-owner@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #1094 ecto, Number 1094 Friday, 29 April 1994 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Reviews! Replies! A Request! Agliotti! Re: adventures in cheeseland Tori, Polly, and Bjork interview, Q May 1994 (long) ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 25 Apr 94 00:22:19 +1000 From: anthony@xymox.apana.org.au (Anthony Horan) Subject: Reviews! Replies! A Request! Agliotti! Hello fellow Ectoids! A lot to cover tonight, so be patient with me: this message is part textual epic, and part klaus. A small klaus part, near the end, with some replies. But first, stuff. I spent the best part of an hour on the phone with Margot Smith's manager earlier this week, talking about the current state of play with her album and future releases here in Australia and overseas. The harsh realities of the music industry do not always make the best listening, and there were a fair few harsh realities mentioned during the conversation. A lot of what was said I cannot repeat even here, for it would be a breach of confidence that I'm not sure I have the authority to do. But a large part of the conversation was to do with getting Margot's album out in the US and Europe, and it is here that you, fellow Ectophile, can help. When the album was completed back in 1992, Margot's manager shopped it around to major US labels, all of whom passed on the album, many without listening to it more than cursorily. This is not unusual for a record released by an Australian label, be it major or independent; there's no automatic release of the album overseas on EMI or Capitol just because EMI released it here. Surprisingly, even labels such as TriStar Music rejected it, as did Arista. Those who remember my April Fool's Day post may also like to visualise my mirth on discovering that the album actually was shopped to Maverick as well; Madonna herself was handed a copy, her reaction remaining unknown. In a couple of week's time round two will commence, and what I'm trying to compile is a list of the Big Independants, if you like - labels that might be disposed towards the album and be able to do it justice, but labels who aren't Sony, Capitol, et al. There's been a change in attitude at some US labels about female vocal music over the last few months, what with Tori's huge success and the enormous amount of hype directed at Sarah, so that's a positive sign for the major label angle. But not being in the US, it's hard for me to think off-hand of other, smaller labels that might be worth investigating. Please let me know - and also, if any of you (Meredith?) have played tracks from Margot's album on college radio, could you fill me in on the station name etc etc and the whens, wheres and how oftens. :) Label info for the UK and Europe would be welcomed too, though the US is the priority at the moment. By the way, without giving away figures I'm sure I'm not allowed to, I estimate from the info I have that I personally have purchased 5% of all copies of "Sleeping With The Lion" sold so far (!), all of course copies that have ended up in the collections of various Ectophiles; Anthem Entertainment have sold a healthy quantity of the disc too, despite the $34.95 price tag. Tangentially to that, they tell me the reason for the high price tag is that they have for some reason been unable to order the album from their usual supplier and have had to resort to getting it through a third party. Those who object to the price may like to note that another online disc importer, CD Bar, should be stocking the album soon. Okay, that's blatant request time out of the way, and before I move on, Australian Ectophiles not on my mailing list should note that Margot is playing two acoustic shows next Friday and Saturday night in Melbourne, supporting Steve Kilbey, at The Continental in Prahran. ***** OTHER TRIVIA SECTION ***** I was very saddened to hear the other day of the demise of Tribe, a band which I will never now have the chance to see live. The good thing about being a fan of a solo artist, I guess, is that unlike bands, they never break up. :) Amongst my musical aquisitions of late: MILLA JOVOVICH - "The Divine Comedy": This arrived the other day thanks woj!) and I haven't been able to get it out of my machine. Whoever it was that made stylistic comparisons between this and Margot's album was right on the money in many ways; the songs are wonderful, Milla's voice quite amazing, and the production is stunning. You should have heard my excited gleeful "yay!" when I read the sleeve notes and saw that Rupert Hine had produced half of the album! Rupert, you're still one of the most sympathetic and intelligent producers around. And that "Sensaura" process that Capitol use (I'm trying in vain over on rec.audio to find out exactly what it is!) - well, while it's supposed to increase spatial awareness in headphones, the real thrill comes from firing Milla's album through a Dolby Pro-Logic Surround system. Mmmm. Discrete instruments appear in the back channel, as do effects, and a large "room" effect that makes things work even better. The production is cinematic anyway, and through a movie system it sounds like, well, a movie. :-) These effects do sound as if they were deliberate - listening to the same back-channel sounds in normal stereo you notice that they are deliberately positioned at something approaching the Dolby Surround out-of-phase location in the mix. So there. Oh, and Martha Davis (remember The Motels?) is on here too. :) NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS - "Let Love In": Melbourne's favorite thin person is back with more of that late-night swagger he's famous for, and this is his best album yet. Love that piano work on the opening track. Not for all tastes, but if you've ever liked Nick, you'll love this. THE CROW - Soundtrack: I just finished reviewing this for Beat, so I'll post the review here in a seperate message. MADDER ROSE - "Panic On": 99 tracks, every one a winner! :-) Actually, this CD steals the honorary Reznor Award for Best Extra Track Coding On A Digital Medium for 1994. The album proper has 14 tracks, and tracks 15 to 98 then fly by silently at a rate of two per second before we hit 99 and the bonus track. Cute. I haven't spent as much time with this album as I'd liked to have done but it sounds great, highlights being the Mazzy Star-like "Car Song" (oh, okay, it's the Doors influence), the title track and "Black Eye Town". The band for the most part sound like The Breeders Go Permanently Melodic. It also reminds me a bit of Liz Phair in places. Just a bit though. THE MOON SEVEN TIMES - "7=49": It just gets wonderfuler and wonderfuler until its own wonderfulness surpasses all other wonderfulness. Wonderful. I do have a problem with the version of "Knock" on here - it seems out of place arrangement-wise, and sounded better on the live video. But heck, then there's "Guppy" and "Crybaby" and then there's the amazing "My Game" with Henry's I-Can-Do-Dave-Gilmour-Better-Than-Dave-Gilmour-Can guitar solo. Yum. Then there's "John", all jangly poppy bliss, and "The Pavement Shines", which is like a breath of the air of another place captured in a song. "On A Limb" is what Frente! might have done had they not signed to a major label, and "Anyway", oh heck, by this stage I just want to pull the disc out of the CD player and hug it. Buy this album. THE KILLJOYS - "Love And Uncertainty EP": an advance cassette of the apparently just-out EP from another of Melbourne's finest. I saw them live here just recently and, with Tim Cole (ex of Not Drowning Waving and who used to do the show before me on RRR-FM back in 1985! :-) mixing the sound, Anna Burley's voice shone. It does here too, an EP recorded in London with Craig Leon. BLONDIE - "Blonde And Beyond": Worth it for the hilarious original version of "Heart Of Glass", called "Once I Had A Love", and a live version of Bowie's "Heroes" with Robert Fripp on guitar. Otherwise mostly disposable b-sides and the odd single, though "Angels On The Balcony" from "AutoAmerican" is a welcome inclusion. The "disco version" of the real "Heart Of Glass" omits the Drum Fills Of Doom at the end of the song and that's a shame. :) That'll do for now; there are a few others that are vying for CD player time, but I'll report on them next time. ***** REPLIES SECTION ***** Vickie writes: > == Texas "Ricks Road" (finally!) > > I've only listened to it once, but it's good. I'm not familiar enough > with it to know if I like it better (or even as much as) "Southside" > and "Mother's Heaven" (both of which I like very much indeed). I have a spare copy of the CD of this that any interested Ectophile is welcome to, especially if they have something interesting to trade. :) > == The Moon Seven Times "7=49" > > tracks taken to the limit...there are only 14 songs listed on the CD, > yet there are about 28! They range from 3 second bits to couple minute > instrumentals. They were in Chicago on Saturday, and I missed them . Well, at least you Stateside persons get a chance to see them! :-( Meredith talks of Sarah: > She remembered me from the Nettwerk chat session when I said I was the one > who had made the rude comment about computer stalkers - I'm not sure if she > remembered me for a good reason or bad (though I think good, because she > said she thought that comment was really funny), but it was cool anyways! Did anyone text-capture this? I'd love to see it, not having been able to participate. > But it was all worth it. Now I've met and talked to Happy, Tori, Kate, > and Sarah... I can die content. :> But you've yet to meet Jane, and Mae Moore, and Margot! :) No rest for the evangelical, Meredith. :-) Philip Sainty asks: > Anyway I thought I'd break (or at least dent :) > the silence by asking about Wendy Matthews... > I've seen a couple of albums by her I think, > but I don't have a clue about her or her music > and I don't remember seeing any mentions of > her here... She's actually Canadian, but has lived in Sydney, Australia for years now, doing backing vox on many albums, and then launching her solo career. She has won many awards here (she just won an ARIA Award the other week for Best Female Vocal even though she hasn't recorded anything new for nearly two years. This was the same awards night that the three year-old group The Badloves stole the Best New Talent Award away from... but I digress... :-) She has, I believe, two solo albums out. I'm not much of a fan of her records but do love her debut single, a song called "Token Angels" that's rather wonderful. Anything specific about her you wanted to know? Finally, Don mailed his post about meeting Mae Moore to me, as it never turned up via Ecto on this end. > Mae is a really upbeat and interesting person to talk to. I then told her > about ecto and gave her Anthony's review she said the name sounded familiar > (hmm). She thought that was great, then I gave her the questions from the > irc session: It's quite possible she may have seen material I wrote for Beat either in Beat itself or in Sydney magazine Drum Media, who used to randomly pilfer articles from Beat. Or maybe Sony forwarded my album review to the US as part of a press report. Hmm indeed! :) > She hadn't heard Margot's album but would like to and will try to get a copy > from Kilbey. If I get to talk to Kilbey on the weekend, I'll ask him to be sure and get a copy to her. Ah, the EctoNetwork looks after its artists once again. :-) > I got a poster signed by Mae for you and she will be back in Australia soon > and will look you up. :) I've already thanked you in #Ecto, Don, but once again, thank you for that! And I'll look forward to being looked up by Mae. :-) > She then signed my CD booklet and I told her how much I liked the Bohemia > extended mix, she said it was radio promo only but she said to ask the Road > manager for a copy, I told her she better ask and she did and brought it out > to our table. As I've discussed with Don, a five-mix CD single which includes the three mixes on this radio promo is the standard release "Bohemia" single in Australia. The cover pic is what I suspect to be the original Canadian album cover. And that's all! Phew, long post. Hope you're all well, and I'll see you in prosaic mode in the next message...! :-) - Anthony -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony Horan, Melbourne Australia - anthony@xymox.apana.org.au "All told, Under The Pink is small but likeably formed; ideal for those herbal-tea moments." - Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian reviewing the new "Victoria Amos" album. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================================== From: Ethan_Straffin@next.com (Ethan Straffin) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 15:27:58 -0700 Subject: Re: adventures in cheeseland Well, I just *have* to chime in here, because it's not often that I see the city of 35,000 where I was born and raised mentioned on an international mailing list. :) Mike M. writes: > Now for those of you who are not in the know (and knowing ecto, > that won't be many :}{) Beloit is just *barely over the border > just past Rockford, IL, off of I-90. I read in my AAA guide that > 150 years ago or so an *entire* town in New Hampshire uprooted > itself and move, lock stock and bagel, to Beloit, Wisconsin. Hee hee, I never knew this. So much for awareness of one's roots! > Thanks to Ian's ace directions, I landed right next to Pearsons hall > where the concert was. As I entered I was struck by the numbness > of the student body, for the concert-chamber had not yet been opened > for admittance and students were ambling in the hall beneath. > They all looked stoned or worse; completely separate from reality, > thus augmenting my already surrealistic other-worldly quease, > having come straight from work. They wore odd, bland, unconsidered > clothing, moved is a quasi-haze, spoke only sparingly -- I had fun > watching them hover. Or is this what a small liberal arts > college is like? I wouldn't know having never attended or visited > one. (What? No Big Ten football team? Less that 40 fraternities? > P-shaw!) I think the traditional liberal-arts-college quietude may be part of it, along with the timing (right before Spring Day) and the fact that Beloit, dear as it is to my heart, is not exactly a hotbed of culture or activity. My dad, who teaches math at Beloit College, tells me that the students tend to get unusually apathetic this time of year. I suspect that the midwinter blues to which most college students seem susceptible can be uncommonly severe in a place like Beloit, where the winters are frigid and bleak. Hence Spring Day, which gives the students the chance to take a break and to realize that, hey wow, the snow's melted and the weather's actually kinda *nice* for once. Ah, Beloit on ecto...I'm tickled pink. :) Thanks for the review, Mike. Further impetus to try to track down some of Ani's music! Ethan ======================================================================== From: Ethan_Straffin@next.com (Ethan Straffin) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 16:02:35 -0700 Subject: Tori, Polly, and Bjork interview, Q May 1994 (long) Okay, okay, I've gotten enough requests that I think this deserves posting here. I've chopped out some superfluous blank lines, and my goofy mailer may well add some, so with luck it will come out close to even in the end. :) Ethan Newsgroups: alt.music.alternative.female Path: rosie.next.com!uunet!majipoor.cygnus.com!sgiblab!a2i!harlock From: harlock@rahul.net (Mike Harlock) Subject: Tori, Polly, and Bjork interview, Q May 1994 (long) Message-ID: Sender: news@rahul.net (Usenet News) Organization: a2i network Date: Fri, 22 Apr 1994 04:22:33 GMT Lines: 656 Typed in by me. Mixed UK and American written text standards and word spellings. Should appease the eyes of most. (and less typos than the Vox interview! :) alt.music.alternative.female gets this interview a few hours before the Tori Amos mailing list. Also, this version is a bit more spellchecked than the one I sent out this morning to the mailing digest. Accompanying pictures will most likely be available on rever.nmsu.edu. (I uploaded them, they need to get validated.) Have fun. ------------------------------------------------------------------- HIPS. TITS. LIPS. POWER. P.J. Harvey, Bjork, Tori Amos. Q: The modern guide to music and more. May, 1994. Title page: Well, would _you_ spill their pint? In the last 18 months, Polly Harvey, Bjork, and Tori Amos have rogered the charts with their special brew of spooky, left-field weirdness and oestrogen-marinated musings. Q invites the gleesome threesome over for a tupperware party with attitude. Adrian Deevoy pours the tea and supplies the fondant fancies. _______ | he Elfin Eskimo, the Kooky American chick and the Mad Bitch Woman | from hell are drinking tea and talking about other people's per- =|= ceptions of them and how wrong they always seem to be. Gathered around a low table in a photographic studio in Islington, North London, they make for gently intense yet engaging company. Soon, the conversation is taking the unlikely B-roads hinted at in their expressly non-linear music. It is punctuated at regular intervals by staccato bursts of manic laughter. If Andrew Lloyd Webber were ever to make Macbeth The Musical!! (The Scottish play as you've never heard it before, starring Nick Cave and Sarah Brightman) he'd need look no further for his three witches. As they talk, parts of their characters begin to emerge: Polly Harvey is a cotious cove, quietly looking on and rolling her own cigarettes, following rather than leading the proceedings; Bjork is a more abstract customer, immediately giving voice to her more random thoughts and pursuing the unlikeliest of tangents; Tori Amos's off-centre broadsides come in elliptical form, often stopping off for a spot of free association and shrinkspeak en route to her original point. With 5 LPs between them (two unsettling albums apiece for Polly and Tori and one half-million UK seller for Bjork's startling debut), they have given spooky, left-field label weirdness back it's good name and everyone from Kate Bush to Evan Dando a run for their money. But what sets these women apart from the mainstream soft soul of Mariah Carey and Dina Caroll is their extraordinary singing voices. Bjork's is a heavenly hiccuping thing that almost defies terrestrial description; Polly's is as if opera diva had eaten a drum kit - swooping and percussive, and Tori's is a finely tutored instrument that manages to simultaneously preach, purr and plead. Their speaking voices are no less unusual: Bjork boasts a yodelling Cockney Icelanding hybrid with occasional East Uropean overtones (that old one); Polly has the soft Rs and sleepily stretched vowels of her native Dorset, while Tori posesses a dreamy mid-American accent which, of the trio, bears the closest resemblance to that which you hear on her records. picture with caption: Mid-interview snount'n'snack attack: "On your tour you start off with health foods and no alcohol, but at the end you're eating crap and smoking." All three have met before, most poigniantly at this year's Brit Awards where bjork collected a brace of gongs and performed Satisfaction with Polly. Seeking refudge from the corporate black slapathon, Tori sought out her fellow female singers backstage, harbouring the suspicion that they might be soul mates. She was, she maintains proudly, correct. * * * * * Q: Do you feel a connection between the three of you? POLLY: I think there is a connection. For me, anyway. This is the first time I've really had the opportunity to meet other women that are in the same kind of situation that I'm in. It's been really helpful for me to see that other people have to deal with exactly the same sort of things that I have to deal with. I was feeling on my own. I was thinking that other people don't have to go through these things, seeing lawyers, getting sued left, right and centre while you're trying to write an album. BJORK: Are you being sued as well? POLLY: Yea, I'm being sued at the moment. It's really horrible. BJORK: I'm so sorry for you. TORI: Do you want us to shoot the lawyer? POLLY: But meeting up with these two has made me stop feeling so sorry for myself. It's just living and everyone has to deal with these kinds of things in their different ways. Q: You've met before, haven't you? BJORK: me and Tori met in Iceland. TORI: She came backstage to see me at my show two years ago. I had been aware of her because of The Sugarcubes and I went to Iceland because I wanted to go so bad. I'd been facinated by it and studied a bit about it so I eventually went. Everybody like, gets drunk, don't they? BJORK: That's Icelandic culture, That's all there is, really. TORI: It's the most expensive place to by alcohol on the planet. BJORK: It's a joke. One beer costs about five quid. TORI: But they were a really good audience for a country that's drunk. BJORK: But that was the way you kept the concentration going. It was amazing. I've done gigs in Iceland that have been ridiculous because people know you and when you're singing, they're shouting, Hey, you didn't make your Engish degree! Your uncle is fucking my neice! TORI: They could have shouted that at me and it probably would have been true. But we went snow-mobiling on the glacier. Polly, you should go there, you'd love it. POLLY: I've never been. In my head I've just seen snow and cold. TORI: There aren't many trees but it's very green. And it's icy in Greenland. They got the names wrong POLLY: Is it hilly or flat? BJORK: It's very hilly. Geographically, it's very young, so it's still in the making. It's not got to the tree stage yet. It's still making moss. TORI: It's a very unique place. It makes sense that Bjork comes from there. Q: What were your impessions of each other before you met? TORI: Total respect for them. BJORK: This might sound really arrogant, I don't know, but when it comes to people who make music, I'm not very interested in most cases. That doesn't mean I think they're bad, they just don't do anything for me. But I could tell very quickly when I heard Polly's album and Tori's album that I'd like them. When I met Polly, it was really relaxed an I have to say that she was like I expected her to be. Q: Were you anxious about meeting each other? POLLY: I wasn't really. As soon as we met it was very easy. BJORK: You can suss some people out pretty quickly. Not completely, obviously, but you can sense weather or not you're on the same wavelength. Q: Do you have, or have you ever, felt in competition with each other? BJORK: no way. POLLY: No. TORI: Never. It's funny for women because journalists pit women against each other. If you think about Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton they were all much more similar to each other than we are. We have tits. We have three holes. That's what we have in common. We don't even play the same instruments. It really dissapoints me when some sort of competition has to be manufactured for their little minds and fantasies. That's not growing, that's not support. There is room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there isn't. We see things from different points of view and that affects people in different ways and I think that should be encouraged. It shouldn't be like, Two tits too many. Like with radio in America, they tell you, well, we're already playing one female this week. They wouldn't think about that with guys. Q: In the last 18 months, you have all felt the pressures of success at full tilt. How have you, in your own ways, coped or not coped? BJORK: I guess I was lucky in that I became a public property in Iceland when I was 11, so I had 15 years of hardcore rehersals before all of this hullabaloo. I guess at the end of the day you realize that this hullabaloo is not about you, it's about that person you've created. It sounds cold and horrible but you feel very lucky that the person who you are - the relationship that you have between you and yourself - is different than with some person who's never met you. It's good to have that distance, because when you get Brit awards and front covers, it's not about you, it's a symbol for what you do. And when it comes to what I do, it's got so little to do with myself. I'm writing songs about other people, my favorite things, whatever, and it's the most unselfish thing you can imagine. Q: Do you agree with that, Tori and Polly? Your songs, ostensibly, seem to be more about first hand personal experience? POLLY: No, I definitely agree with what Bjork was saying. I'm just growing to realize that it's not you when you see your picture in the paper. I can now see that it's something competely removed from what I am. picture with caption: "We have tits. We have three holes. That's what we have in common." Q: You had some problems with that, didn't you? POLLY: yea, because I couldn't remove myself and I found it very difficult. Anything that I read would really upset me. Or I wouldn't realize at the time and then later on it would really upset me. But now I can disassociate myself from that. I think maby it's just time that does it. The longer I've done this, the more I've learnt how to deal with it and not be dragged down by it. But I did at the start. It really upset me. BJORK: You have one relationship with your Grandmother and one with your boyfriend and one with the guy in the grocery shop. That doesn't mean you're being fake or untrue, it's just that you have those different colors in you. TORI: You have to know what your intentions are. In this little time we've spent together, supporting each other, I sense that our intentions are about exposing things within our own beings which become mirrors for other people. Like when I listen to Polly's words, I see pieces of me that I'm not willing to see. So I'm like (taking a series of deep breaths) OK, be with this for a moment, Tori, and hear what Polly is saying. And I hear pieces of Bjork that I cut out a long time ago. The girl that jumps off rooftops, that part. It's all about consciousness. We're not actors. I think songwriters are the conciousness or the unconscious of the time. That's what the poet's job is. I'm only a mirror. If someone hates my guys, then they only hate half of me. Do you understand? 50 percent of it is me and 50 percent of it is them. A great review? Half of that is them. BJORK: Sorry, it's nothing personal but generally journalists don't have a clue. I don't expect them to have one. It's very rare that you read something with some insight. Maby five percent of reviews I can identify with and then only a little bit. Q: But certain reviews must stay with you. BJORK: Uhm, I'm not saying (laughter). TORI: What I remember is spending three hours with someone for an interview and you've gotten to know them a little bit and talked about intimate things and tried to be open. Then you've read what they've written and you think, God, this is not where I was. You feel really invaded. You think, Well, that is a Cornflake Girl. People want to know what a Cornflake Girl is? That journo right there. Q: Don't you feel you sometimes reveal too much of yourselves? BJORK: I think if there's a place to reveal yourself then it's in the songs. It's not like you decide, OK, I'm going to reveal myself. It's just a certain need. You're just focusing on the things you're talking about and not necessarily yourself. I compare what I do to sleeping, because most journalists seem to get that pretty easily. There's no way you can decide what position you're going to be in when you wake up in the morning. You just roll around the bad and it happens. And if you don't do it for a week, you go mad. Small picture of Bjork with caption: "I just wasn't interested in boys until a few years ago. I thought they were shit. You can't get properly drunk with them." Q: Do you feel in control of your lives? POLLY: Yep, I do. Nearly. (laughter) BJORK: I could be more in control but I don't want to be. I decide what happens. I'm always so thirsty for this element of surprise that I don't want to plan more than a few days ahead. Q: But shurley in your current position you can't do that. It must be difficult to be spontaneous. TORI: What's spontaneity? There isn't an spontaneity. I'm just speaking for me right now. On stage, when I play, that's my moment of freedom, but 19 hours a day are packed with what's got to happen to get to the next show. I'm a bit of a road dog. I love to play. I guess it's because I did clubs for 14 years before Little Earthquakes happened. So I know what I'm doing Spetember 6 or August 7. Will you call me up and cheer me up on August 7? POLLY: Course I will. It'll be funny, you'll have to try to keep this balance between being organized and being creative and keeping everything in balance in your head and monitoring everything that's going on. BJORK: It's about allowing enough space for accidents to happen. Being in control and yet not. Being just in control enough. That really turns me on. POLLY: I got that last night! Half a bottle of wine and I was thinking, Wor! What a great life! Q: You all perform with a great degree of abandon. What does that mean to you? TORI: It's everything. POLLY: It's what gets me through...my life. It reminds you about why you wanted to do that in the first place because you have a love and a need to do it. BJORK: it's hard to pin it down without bringing out a string of cliche's. It's an addiction, but it's not JUST that. TORI: You're not even thinking anymore. You just free up your mind and _express_. Thered's nothing calculated. I don't play the piano, the piano plays me. small picture of Polly with caption: "For me, music is a turn on. It's not something to do with your head, it's to do with your body, which is a very sexual instrument." BJORK: You sacrifice yourself. And you lose everything - like the fact that I'm this big and an Icelandic female and all that. I think that this is the reason that music and sex are so often compared with each- other. The most common way of feeliing this is probably in sex. Because when you're having sex, you don't think, I'm now going to move my left arm 30 centimeters. You just have to do something and you follow your instincts. In that sense, although I'm not saying I'm thinking about sex all the time when I'm on stage, it's a very similar feeling to having very good sex with someone. TORI: That's so good that you have sex like that. I have a much harder time opening up in the intimate sex relm because I have stuff to deal with. I don't have to go there emotionally when I play. It's harder for me to feel that in sex. The only time I can really feel it is when I play and I guess that's why I do so many shows. I'm dry. In real life I'm bone dry, and when I play I'm a mango and in sex I'm starving to be a dripping mango. BJORK: I'm not very good at communicating things but with music it makes sense. POLLY: I think you're really good at communicating. BOJRK: Yea, but I have to use my brain alot, and it's taken 28 years to get to this. small picture of Tori with caption: "I'm real life I'm bone dry and when I play I'm a mango and in sex I'm starving to be a dripping mango." * * * * * Q: Do you go mad when you tour? BJORK: You bet, man. You start out with fucking health foods and no alcohol... POLLY: ...you're totally cleaned out and you're eating well and doing excersize, swimming every day, and by the end of the tour you're drinking to calm down instead of meditating or whatever, and eating crap and smoking. TORI: It's really great for me to hear this because my tour starts tomorrow. BJORK: And your reading just goes down the toilet. You start off reading highly spiritual, good-for-the-brain things and by the end I'm just reading about fucking and sex orgies. Q: Do you ever feel like you can't be bothered to perform? TORI: yea, of course but you can tap into that source. I'm just a conduit for some kind of power. I'm just a vase and the water is flowing through me. You put your hands on the voltage and it just surges through you and if the crowd are giving that out too, it can completely energize you back. Q: How do you deal with hecklers? TORI: There's always someone who wants to make you doubt yourself and scream at you. I have a very quiet house when I play, so I can always hear them. I don't know if there are any hecklers loud enough for Polly to hear from the stage. BJORK: Meat Loaf! TORI: Get off the stage, you fucking whore! They shout that and so you (leans forward agressively) and go, Look, I'm here for an hour and twenty fucking minutes and if you don't have a gun to blow me off the stage then I'm staying. POLLY: I've had people from beginning to end just shouting, You fucking bitch! Go back to fucking Yeovil! I always wonder why they've paid money to do that. I just smile and sing at them and that seems to work. Dedicate a song to them, that _always_ works. TORI: When that happens, your first reaction is to crawl into a bubble bath and have a pizza. But you have to respect yourself and draw the line and deal with it. I don't like confrontations but you have to do something. BJORK: And you learn, after a while, to turn everything into something that turns you on. it's like you've got this button. You learn to use things. If someone shouts at you, you can use it to make a song better. Q: Can you be megalomaniacs? BJORK: In my case, I wish I was a little bit more of a megalomaniac. Just kidding, OK. I'm guilty! POLLY: Me too! Q: unbearable? TORI: Of course. BJORK: You might attack some innocent room service people or something. Q: How does it feel to be an object of lust? POLLY: An object of lust! TORI: What's lust? (laughter) Q: Student desire. BJORK: Student desire. Mmmm. I have to say alot of that is created by the media. Q: But it's true. You are all lusted after in some way or another. BJORK: I just can't relate to it. Q: But that doesn't stop it existing. BJORK: I know. Maybe we should talk about this. It's very difficult. Q: Didn't you fancy pop-stars yourself when you were very young? BJORK: No. I was into Albert Einstien and David Attenborough. I really lusted after him. POLLY: David Attenborough was lovely. TORI: Sorry girls, but robert plant did it for me. Sorry. I was 10 years old and I wanted to give him my virginity. I decided he was better than all the boys in my class. BJORK: I just wasn't interested in boys until a few years ago. I thought they were shit. You can't talk to them, especially as a teenager. You could play with them in a band but as people they were so limited. You can't get properly drunk with them. Like, all the way drunk. TORI: Are you serious? POLLY: I'm a late starter as well. I didn't start dating until I was 20 and I'm 24 now. TORI: I was in love with this boy when I was five years old and I knew we could really make it work. I was trying to convince him and he took this hammer and hit me with it really hard and, you're going to really hate me for this, but I was so stupid, I tried to get my dad, the minister, to invite them over because I wanted to see him and conquer his heart. I was going to give him bubble-gum and then he'd let me into his treehouse to play with his toy machine-guns. I just wanted to be with him so bad. Q: did it work out? TORI: No, never. He called me a nerd. * * * * * Q: Do you ever use drugs when you're writing? BJORK: Drugs? What _are_ you talking about? (laughter) POLLY: You mean drugs as a tool to write? Only really alcohol and then not much. BJORK: I sing best without anything. I know this sounds really hippy, but being on top of a mountain in the middle of the day would be best for me. but to be able to socialize with all these people, because I'm quite an introverted sort of person, I'll have a cognac before I go on stage. But even that's more of a ritual more than anything. And maybe a bottle of wine afterwards to chill down. Q: Do you ever fancy pop-stars now or do you understand the contrivance of image to well to do that? TORI: I think we've all been doing this too long to fall for that. Q: Don't you ever look at a picture of Morissey and think Phwoar! BJORK: Morissey? You're _joking._ POLLY: It's more likely to be someone who works in the pub down the road. You don't fancy people just because they're pop stars. And it's not just men. Women can be attractive too. TORI: KD Lang is kind of attractive. And that grip who was on the video shoot the other day was _very_ attractive. BJORK: Headphones really turn me on. POLLY: _headphones?_ BJORK: and good literature. The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille usually does the job. Q: You all draw on sex very heavily in your work. TORI: Sexuality. There is a difference. Sex is this (inserts right index finger into left thumb and fore-finger 'O' shape). Sexuality is being in touch with something that isn't just that. It's passion. Sexuality is a much greater thing than, Do it all night, honey. Q: Sexuality, then. POLLY: It's a very natural thing to write about, I think. It's like getting yourself turned onto a play in a way. For me, music is something that is very sexual. It's a turn-on. It's not something to do with your head, it's to do with your body, which is a very sexual instrument. To bring sexual elements into the lyrics to go with the music just makes perfect sense to me. It just happens. Q: Alot,in your case. Did you read Elvis Costello saying that alot of Polly's songs "seem to be about blood and fucking"? POLLY: (pause) Well, he's wrong. (laughter) Q: Are you flattered when elder statesmen of rock (Eric Clapton, Costello, Warren Zevon - announce that your records have been their favorites in the last year? BJORK: Half of me is a bit of a rebel, thinking that someone my dad used to listen to, stuff like Cream, saying that my stuff is all right must mean I've gone wrong somewhere. But half of me is really flattered. If you want the honest truth, I'll be sickly sentimental and say that if my best friend says she likes a song it would affect me alot more. Q: Are you aware of what the public think of you? BJORK: I think in my case, it was decided that I was an Eskimo Elf. And I guess that's...(laughs) something I'll have to live with. POLLY: And I'm a mad bitch woman from hell. I can't get enough sex or blood! TORI: People's perceptions of Polly seem to be completely off. Compared to when I met her, excuse me, but Polly was like an angel. So loving. So I think whoever made her out to be this mad bitch women has done her an injustice. Q: But you must have done something to give people that initial impression. POLLY: I suppose I give as much as I want to give. I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing. With Tori I liked her straight away, so she got me. But people do have completely the wrong idea about me, almost the opposite, in fact. And I'm quite happy for it to be like that. Do I want loads of people to know who I am? I'd much rather they didn't have a clue. BJORK: I didn't get that "mad bitch" impression from listening to Polly's records. I thought she sounded like a caring person. I didn't expect her to turn up with a chainsaw. Q: Finally, do you have anything to add? POLLY: Just, thank you, really. TORI: Could I ask you just please not to use any exclamation points? it looks so awful. BJORK: I've said far too much already. I should learn to say less. ----- -- __ < \ Harlock@rahul.net - Mike Harlock [\\\\\\(\ (:::<======================================- \< > \ Practice Random Kindness ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is an INDEX file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)